Blackweight
Wondrous item (consumable), rare, illegal in Quillnib's Handle without a licence
"Write your name in it once and it's yours forever. Write someone else's name in it and, well. Also forever." — Ilse Marrow, to a customer
Blackweight is a thick, glossy ink the colour of a wet night sky, with faint pale flecks that drift in it like dust in a sunbeam. It is made from the remains of Denslings, boiled down under pressure until what's left no longer sloshes. A pot the size of a fist weighs as much as a brick.
Properties
- Heavy words. Anything written in Blackweight weighs twice what it should. A letter is noticeably heavy in the hand. A full book written in it takes two people to carry.
- Permanent. It cannot be scraped off, washed out, burnt away, or removed with prestidigitation or dispel magic. The page can be destroyed, but the words go down with it, legible to the end.
- Stable. Magical writing done in Blackweight doesn't fade, smear, or drift. This is why the Rift-Sniffers use it to repair the pages of the Book of Doors.
Rules: A spell scroll inscribed in Blackweight can't be dispelled or counterspelled while it is being read, but casting from it takes one extra action because the words are hard to lift off the page. A contract signed in Blackweight is not magically binding, but no one will ever be able to argue about what it said.
Price and the Law
- Licensed (Rift-Sniffers only): Not sold. Kept under lock by the Long Noses for page repairs.
- Black market: 250 gp a pot, and rising. Most of it passes through Ilse Marrow.
Making, selling or carrying Blackweight in Quillnib's Handle without a licence means your pot is poured out and your page number is struck from the register for a year. For a Handle goblin that is a harsher punishment than a prison cell.
Who Wants It
- Tattooists, because a Blackweight tattoo can't be removed by any means, and some people want exactly that.
- Scroll Binders, who would dearly like a pact nobody could smudge. Most of them won't admit to buying it.
- Forgers, who don't want it at all and live in fear of a document that can't be altered.
- Dreamweavers, who want it gone. Many of them regard Denslings as something close to holy, and consider Blackweight to be made from murder.